Johnny Ludlow First Series Part 54

"We are so sorry this has happened, Lettice," Anna gently said, going up to the gig. "I do hope it will be cleared up soon. Remember one thing--I shall think well of you, until it is. _I_ do not suspect you."

"I am turned out like a criminal, Miss Anna," sobbed the girl. "They searched me to the skin; that Miss Cattledon standing on to see that the housekeeper did it properly; and they have searched my boxes. The only one to speak a kind word to me as I came away, was Miss Deveen herself.

It's a disgrace I shall never get over."

"That's rubbish, Lettice, you know,"--for I thought I'd put in a good word, too. "You will soon forget it, once the right fellow is pitched upon. Good luck to you, Lettice."

Anna shook hands with her, and the man drove on, Lettice sobbing aloud.

Not hearing Anna's footsteps, I looked round and saw she had sat down on one of the benches, though it was white with frost. I went back.

"Don't you go and catch cold, Anna."

"Johnny, you cannot think how this is troubling _me_."

"Why you--in particular?"

"Well--for one thing I can't believe that she is guilty. I have always liked Lettice."

"So did we at d.y.k.e Manor. But if she is not guilty, who is?"

"I don't know, Johnny," she continued, her eyes taking a thoughtful, far-off look. "What I cannot help thinking, is this--though I feel half ashamed to say it. Several visitors were in the house last night; suppose one should have found her way into the room, and taken them?

If so, how cruel this must be on Lettice Lane."

"Sophie Chalk suggested the same thing to me to-day. But a visitor would not do such a thing. Fancy a lady stealing jewels!"

"The open box might prove a strong temptation. People do things in such moments, Johnny, that they would fly from at other times."

"Sophie said that too. You have been talking together."

"I have not exchanged a word with Sophie Chalk on the subject. The ideas might occur naturally to any of us."

I did not think it at all likely to have been a visitor. How should a visitor know there was an open jewel-box in Miss Deveen's room? The chamber, too, was an inner one, and therefore not liable to be entered accidentally. To get to it you had to go through Miss Cattledon's.

"The room is not easy of access, you know, Anna."

"Not very. But it might be reached."

"I say, are you saying this for any purpose?"

She turned round and looked at me rather sharply.

"Yes. Because I do not believe it was Lettice Lane."

"Was it Miss Cattledon herself, Anna? I have heard of such curious things. Her eyes took a greedy look to-day when they rested on the jewels."

As if the suggestion frightened her--and I hardly know how I came to whisper it--Anna started up, and ran across the lawn, never looking back or stopping until she reached the house.

XIV.

AT MISS DEVEEN'S.

The table was between us as we stood in the dining-room at d.y.k.e Manor--I and Mrs. Todhetley--and on it lay a three-cornered article of soft geranium-coloured wool, which she called a "fichu." I had my great coat on my arm ready for travelling, for I was going up to London on a visit to Miss Deveen.

It was Easter now. Soon after the trouble, caused by the loss of the emerald studs at Whitney Hall in January, the party had dispersed.

Sophie Chalk returned to London; Tod and I came home; Miss Deveen was going to Bath. The studs had not been traced--had never been heard of since; and Lettice Lane, after a short stay in disgrace at her mother's cottage, had suddenly disappeared. Of course there were not wanting people to affirm that she had gone off to her favourite land of promise, Australia, carrying the studs with her.

The Whitneys were now in London. They did not go in for London seasons; in fact, Lady Whitney hardly remembered to have had a season in London at all, and she quite dreaded this one, saying she should feel like a fish out of water. Sir John occupied a bedroom when he went up for Parliament, and dined at his club. But Helen was nineteen, and they thought she ought to be presented to the Queen. So Miss Deveen was consulted about a furnished house, and she and Sir John took one for six weeks from just before Easter. They left Whitney Hall at once to take possession; and Bill Whitney and Tod, who got an invitation, joined them the day before Good Friday.

The next Tuesday I received a letter from Miss Deveen. We were very good friends at Whitney, and she had been polite enough to say she should be glad to see me in London. I never expected to go, for three-parts of those invitations do not come to anything. She wrote now to ask me to go up; it might be pleasant for me, she added, as Joseph Todhetley was staying with the Whitneys.

It is of no use going on until I have said a word about Tod. If ever a fellow was hopelessly in love with a girl, he was with Sophie Chalk. I don't mean hopeless as to the love, but as to getting out of it. On the day that we were quitting Whitney Hall--it was on the 26th of January, and the icicles were cl.u.s.tering on the trees--they had taken a long walk together. What Tod said I don't know, but I think he let her know how much he loved her, and asked her to wait until he should be of age and could ask the question--would she be his wife? We went with her to the station, and the way Tod wrapped her up in the railway-carriage was as good as a show. (Pretty little Mrs. Hughes, who had been visiting old Featherston, went up by the same train and in the same carriage.) They corresponded a little, she and Tod. Nothing particular in her letters, at any rate--nothing but what the world might see, or that she might have written to Mrs. Todhetley, who had one from her on occasion--but I know Tod just lived on those letters and her remembrance; he could not hide it from me; and I saw without wishing to see or being able to help myself. Why, he had gone up to London now in one sole hope--that of meeting again with Miss Chalk!

Mrs. Todhetley saw it too--had seen it from the time when Sophie Chalk was at d.y.k.e Manor--and it grieved and worried her. But not the Squire: he no more supposed Tod was going to take up seriously with Sophie Chalk, than with the pink-eyed lady exhibited the past year at Persh.o.r.e Fair.

Well, that's all of explanation. This was Wednesday morning, and the Squire was going to drive me to the station for the London train. Mrs.

Todhetley at the last moment was giving me charge of the fichu, which she had made for Sophie Chalk's sister.

"I did not send it by Joseph; I thought it as well not to do so," she observed, as she began to pack it up in tissue paper. "Will you take it down to Mrs. Smith yourself, Johnny, and deliver it?"

"All right."

"I--you know, Johnny, I have the greatest dislike to anything that is mean or underhand," she went on, dropping her voice a little. "But I do not think it would be wrong, under the circ.u.mstances, if I ask you to take a little notice of what these Smiths are. I don't mean in the way of being fashionable, Johnny; I suppose they are all that; but whether they are nice, good people. Somehow I did not like Miss Chalk, with all her fascinations, and it is of no use to pretend that I did."

"She was too fascinating for ordinary folk, good mother."

"Yes, that was it. She seemed to put the fascinations on. And, Johnny, though we were to hear that she had a thousand a year to her fortune, I should be miserable if I thought Joe would choose her for his wife."

"She used to say she was poor."

"But she seemed to have a whole list of lords and ladies for her friends, so I conclude she and her connections must be people of note.

It is not that, Johnny--rich or poor--it is that I don't like her for herself, and I do not think she is the one to make Joe happy. She never spoke openly about her friends, you know, or about herself. At any rate, you take down this little parcel to Mrs. Smith, with my kind regards, and then you'll see them for yourself. And in judgment and observation you are worth fifty of Joe, any day."

"Not in either judgment or observation; only in instinct."

"And that's for yourself," she added, slipping a sovereign into my pocket. "I don't know how much Mr. Todhetley has given you. Mind you spend your money in right things, Johnny. But I am not afraid; I could trust you all over the world."

Giles put in my portmanteau, and we drove off. The hedges were beginning to bud; the fields looked green. From observations about the young lambs, and a broken fence that he went into a pa.s.sion over, the Squire suddenly plunged into something else.

"You take care of yourself, sir, in London! Boys get into all kinds of pitfalls there, if they don't mind."

"But I do not call myself a boy, sir, now."

"Not call yourself a boy!" retorted the Squire, staring. "I'd like to know what else you are. Tod's a boy, sir, and nothing else, though he does count twenty years. I wonder what the world's coming to!" he added, lashing up Bob and Blister. "In my days, youngsters did not think themselves men before they had done growing."

"What I meant was that I am old enough to take care of myself. Mrs.

Todhetley has just said she could trust me all over the world."